Aerial view of central Tehran, 2008. Flickr/Ensie & Matthias. Some rights reserved.In the early hours of 10 May, a rocket attack into the Israel-controlled Golan heights was followed by a series of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) airstrikes into Syria. At the time of writing details are sketchy, but the latter – involving more than fifty raids that widely targeted Iran's military infrastructure in Syria – are evidently substantial. The timing of this confrontation, just hours after President Trump announced the United States's withdrawal from the multilateral treaty over Iran's nuclear programme, gives it added significance.
The first incident started when two mobile Uragan rocket-launchers were used to fire around twenty unguided BM-27 short-range rockets across the border towards Israeli forces deployed in the Golan, which was among the territory taken by Israel in the six-day war of 1967.
The BM-27 is a 1970s-vintage Soviet system, and some rockets were reportedly intercepted by the IDF's "iron dome" anti-missile system. There were no reports of Israeli casualties. Israel claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible, and Israel responded with a major series of air- and missile-attacks on dozens of targets in Syria, mainly sites linked to the IRGC.
